Mare being milked in Northern Kazakhstan. "Wherever man has left his footprint in the long ascent from barbarism to civilization we will find the hoofprint of the horse beside it," wrote 18th century historian John Moore (AP/Science, Alan K. Outram).
WASHINGTON – People and horses have trekked together through at least 5,500 years of history, according to an international team of researchers reporting in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
New evidence, corralled in Kazakhstan, indicates the Botai culture used horses as beasts of burden — and as a source of meat and milk — about 1,000 years earlier than had been widely believed, according to the team led by Alan Outram of England's University of Exeter.
"This is significant because it changes our understanding of how these early societies developed," Outram said.
Domestication of the horse was an immense breakthrough — bringing advancements in communications, transportation, farming, and warfare.
The research also shows the development of animal domestication and a fully pastoral economy may well be independent of famous centers of domestication, such as the Near East and China, Outram added.
Compared to dogs, domesticated as much as 15,000 years ago, and such food animals as sheep, goats, and pigs, horses are relatively late arrivals in the human relationship.
"It is not so much the domestication of the horse that is important, but the invention of horseback riding," commented anthropologist David W. Anthony of Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. "When people began to ride, it revolutionized human transport."
"For the first time the Eurasian steppes, formerly a hostile ecological barrier to humans, became a corridor of communication across Eurasia linking China to Europe and the Near East. Riding also forever changed warfare. Boundaries were changed, new trading partners were acquired, new alliances became possible, and resources that had been beyond reach became reachable," observed Anthony, who was not part of Outram's research team.
Some researchers believe this new mobility may have led to the spread of Indo-European languages and many other common aspects of human culture, Outram said. More>>
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